


The Dwarf In The Stone

by Artemisdesari



Series: Fairy Tales of Middle Earth [1]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Azanulbizar, F/M, Folk Tale, Frerin Lives, Pre Quest for Erebor, Stone dwarves, alternative universe, fairy tale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:15:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27046330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemisdesari/pseuds/Artemisdesari
Summary: No one in the Shire knows where the odd statue of the sitting dwarf came from. No one remembers how long it has been there or why someone saw fit to place it on the long bench under the great oak in the first place
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Frerin
Series: Fairy Tales of Middle Earth [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1992541
Comments: 27
Kudos: 158





	The Dwarf In The Stone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jimiel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jimiel/gifts).



_No one in the Shire knows where the odd statue of the sitting dwarf came from. No one remembers how long it has been there or why someone saw fit to place it on the long bench under the great oak in the first place. What they do know is that while mothers gather to gossip their children will climb over him, they know that he has always been there and likely always will be. Strange as the statue is, the bench would be wrong without him._ _If he could talk, they joke, what stories would he tell of the things he has seen, of how he came to be there._

_Little do they know._

* * *

He is dying. His wound is deep, his swords hang uselessly from his blood soaked hands and his breath comes in laboured gasps as he staggers from the fringes of the battle. The screams of agony and roars of defiance of his own people and his enemy fill the air with a terrible cacophony that rings and echoes around him. There will be no healer for him, he knows as one of his legs buckles and he falls to the sound of another scream. He does not know if it is his, his throat is too raw to tell and he may well have lost the use of his voice hours ago, but the sound of his blades clattering upon the rock beneath him is lost in the sound.

He grunts, dragging himself back to his feet with a pained moan. He barely manages to pick up his swords but he sheathes them once he has all the same. It would not do to be found dead without them. He manages to stagger forwards a few more steps before he falls again, hands moving too slowly to for him to hope to catch himself, and they drag down something unexpectedly soft that makes the stone in him tingle.

"Dwarves," a voice sneers. "More trouble has been caused by your kind than you have worth," he continues. "Still, He wants you saved, Frerin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, and so saved you shall be. A pity, then, that he failed to specify _how_."

Frerin coughs, blood bursting from his mouth and bubbling in his throat as the Man talks. Brilliant red splatters against white that has not already been touched by the mess of crimson and black on Frerin's hands. He hears another noise of disgust.

"You shall live," the voice says, "but it shall be as the stone you were created from until the other half of you joins you. Worry not, they will know you."

White light surrounds him and this time he _does_ scream.

* * *

When he is aware of himself again Frerin is not where he had been. He is somewhere entirely unfamiliar and entirely unknown to him, surrounded by people who chatter among themselves in the shade of a tree which has shed leaves in greens and golds and browns upon his still form. He tries to move, to speak or call out, to do more than stare straight ahead. Even to blink. He cannot and his mind cries out in rebellion against it as he watches helplessly.

Some awareness tells him that he is sat, with one arm stretched across the back of a low bench which is under a great tree and one ankle resting on the top of the knee of his other leg, his other hand rested as though holding his leg in place. He cannot tell what expression he must wear, although he supposes it must be as approachable as his posture because he quickly comes to learn that the children of the strange people he has found himself among use him as a place to climb and play games while their mothers and fathers shop at the weekly market that sets up beneath the tree. And they _are_ a strange people, smaller than even dwarves but rounded from rich diets of good food with lines about their eyes from laughter and good cheer. Their hair, predominantly blond though there are a number with chestnut locks and fewer still with the brilliant auburn that Frerin associates with Firebeards, curls tightly and even the oldest males do not seem to grow beards, although their sideburns seem to get thicker as the years pass. Their feet are startling, large and bare except for a covering of curls over the top. Even the children do not wear shoes unless it is a particularly bitter winter's day.

Gradually he learns that they are known as hobbits, an insular, pampered people with little idea or care about the hardships of the world outside. He hears children ask why there is a statue of a dwarf on the bench and their parents answer that they simply awoke one morning to find him there. Often they will say that it is likely the result of some Took or Brandybuck mischief and tell their children not to think any more of him. They do not question it further because they do not need to and do not wish to.

Seasons pass, and Frerin watches and waits. He becomes fond of the young ones, especially the Baggins children, of whom there are more than he had ever thought a family could produce. He learns that while he cannot move his body, he has an awareness of all that happens around him. He can bend the world around him just enough that he had provide the perfect hiding place for little ones, or even slightly older ones, who do not wish to be found. He becomes the favourite hiding place of the children and their confidant when they have no one else they feel they can go to. He hears stories that make him long for his swords and want to scream in rage and frustration, that make him think he will never be free of this stone prison as he does not believe that he will ever be able to love again with everything that he has seen and heard in this place. But, more often, he also hears stories that make his heart warm and the fire within it blaze once more. He hears of first loves and tween romances, of weddings and new children, of the kindness of neighbours against the slights of others. Hobbits are just like much of the rest of the world in that respect.

He watches, and he waits and he listens. He grows fonder and fonder of the hobbits, he hears how Bungo Baggins finally wins the heart of the flighty Belladonna Took and remembers that night that serious, sensible, Bungo had sat beside him and confessed how deeply touched his heart was by the Took girl. Frerin is happy for him, but jealous at the same time. Bungo has found to one who calls to his heart, trapped in this place Frerin may never be able to do the same. Still, he watches the wedding from under his tree with a smiling heart, even though something about the girl Bungo loves touches a deep instinct that makes him want to scream there is little he can do and he longs only for the happiness of his favourite.

No matter his misgivings, Bungo and Belladonna are happy together. They look like the perfect couple to observing eyes, doting upon one another and always sharing some little secret or buying the other some small treat. Frerin, however, notices the strain behind the smiles, the dark eyes filled with something he cannot quite name except that it seems a long way from love. It is something that grows in Belladonna as the years pass, even though Bungo is smiles and words of love. He seems not to notice it and Frerin wonders if he is seeing too much in glances and silent gestures. The mutters of the matrons, however, which follow the young couple when they leave the market make him wonder if things have progressed past glances and gestures. He longs to speak with Bungo, to warn him that the marriage he has invested so much into may not be as stable as he had thought. There is nothing he can do but watch and wait.

So he waits, and he watches, and soon enough word rushes through the market the Belladonna Baggins is finally with child. It has, by Frerin's count, been six years since Bungo and Belladonna married. That it has taken so long for them to have a child is unusual. Frerin has been trapped among hobbits for long enough to know that a marriage is normally followed by a child in six months, two years at the most, so for it to have taken so long makes him wonder what has been happening in the home that Bungo built for the two of them. He hears rumours, his place on the bench under the tree is the best place to hear about the goings on of Hobbiton and much of the Shire. Not for the first time he wishes that he could move from his bench and _see_ what is happening behind the closed doors of Bag End.

Regardless of his reservations, the pregnancy continues as so many do and as the harvest season begins Belladonna gives birth to a daughter. The child is named Bilba and he watches her grow with fascination. It does not take long, perhaps two years, for Frerin to wonder if Bilba is Bungo's daughter at all. Belladonna has dark hair, as does Bungo, but Bilba is as fair as the sun. Frerin remembers a long line of Baggins children, he has never seen a fair haired child among them. Still, there is something about the girl and he feels his blood boil as the gossips start again, as the matrons whisper with the same conclusions that he has drawn. The words, of course, reach Bungo, and it is only a matter of time before it is confirmed that Bilba is not his blood. Still, the hobbit dotes on the child that is not truly his, much to the bafflement of the rest of the occupants of the Shire.

Bilba grows from a child to a beautiful tween girl with only a little of her mother's flightiness. She is often found curled on the bench next to Frerin, the statue that she cannot have any inkling is aware of every moment she is near. She reads to him, at first as a young child practising her letters, and later for the sheer enjoyment of it. Often a group of children and teens will gather at her feet to listen as she reads and often the stories are fanciful nonsense of love and magic. It is little like the world outside the Shire though they mention dwarves and elves often enough. As well as the wizards. Frerin puts little stock in them, after all he is trapped in his stone prison due to a wizard.

As with so many other young ones in the Shire, Frerin becomes Bilba's confidant, the one who she whispers her deepest secrets to when she has no one else to turn to and it is alarming how often she begins to come to him. It is not until she mentions her father's illness that Frerin realises _why_ Bilba feels that she has no one else to turn to. Bungo is dying, though it is a slow and agonising death to see even in glimpses. Bilba will sneak out at night to visit Frerin and when she does she whispers every thought and every hope and every wish to him. Sometimes she will pause and in that time Frerin will think all the things that he longs to say to her in return, all the offers to take her away if he were only able, all the hopes that something will be found which will help her father, the wish that he could take her in his arms and shelter her from the grief he knows is coming. And in those times she will smile sadly up at him, touch his stone cheek and tell him " _I know you would_ " as though she has heard his every word. In those moments he feels his heart break a little to realise that she will never know how important those touches and that acknowledgement, even though it is likely a desperate moment of pretending on her part, is to him. It hurts to know that she will never hear the songs he sings her in his mind during the quiet days when she lounges beside him and reads in silence or how much he missed her before her father fell ill when the snows of winter came and she was not there each day.

The weeks pass, and so come the rumours. Frerin has become good at hearing the mutters of the hobbits under the tree. He has become something of an expert at deciphering which rumours he hears have some basis in fact, which are true and which are entirely fiction. The rumours that he hears worry him. Some say that Belladonna is deliberately poisoning her husband, something he knows to be false as over the years she has obviously grown to love Bungo and regret certain actions taken in her early years. Certainly the hobbit's joy in raising Belladonna's child even though Bilba was never of his blood had seemed to work greatly in his favour. Frerin does not think he could have been so forgiving of Belladonna in Bungo's place. The rumour that concerns him the most, however, is that Bungo will only allow Bilba to inherit everything if she is already married when he passes. The lass is only just of age and none of the local lads are, in Frerin's opinion, worthy of her. But Belladonna hears the same rumours, and she obviously puts more faith in them than Frerin, who knows not what to believe of them for they do not fit with the hobbit lad he watched grow up and yet they match a bitter heart cheated of a loving marriage. Without Bag End and the wealth that goes with it, Belladonna will have to return to the Great Smial and take Bilba with her. Frerin is not sure which prospect is worse; having to lose Bilba to Tuckborough and the Great Smial, or watch her married to a hobbit she does not love and forced into a sham marriage of misery for the sake of a house and her mother's wealth.

He loves her, he realises. He loves her and she will never know it, trapped as he is in stone by the wizard. Yet he whispers it to her in his mind when she comes to him, he whispers it when she leaves him. He sees her smile at the words that she cannot hear and sometimes thinks that she appears to be on the edge of saying it back to him. But how can she?

It happens early one morning, before the sun has peaked over the horizon and everything is washed in the eerie grey of pre-dawn. Sat upon his bench Frerin listens to the birds as they begin to wake, as they start to utter the first faint chirrups which have become one of the few sounds of nature that he truly enjoys. He does not sleep in his stone prison, not really though he sometimes experiences waking dreams of a time when he might be free, he does not need it, but the birds are something to look forward to in the mornings. He hears the sobbing first, even in the Shire hobbits are mostly silent when moving from one place to another, but it is quickly followed by Bilba, who clambers into his lap in a way that she has not since she was young, curling there as much as she can. Bungo must be dead, Frerin thinks, that is the only reason that she would be so heartbroken so early in the day. Her next words, then, come as something of a surprise.

"I can't do it," she sobs. "I can't marry him." Marry? His mind screams at the idea. "But I must, for mother's sake I must." She starts to sob some more and Frerin longs to wrap his arms around her, curses the wizard viciously in his mind when he remains as still as ever. "I will miss you," the hobbit continues around her tears, "but I need to grow up. You were such a wonderful dream." She turns tear filled eyes up to look into his face, seeming to search for a reaction that Frerin knows she will never see even though his heart is breaking at the thought that she is being forced to marry someone.

Then, for the first time in too long, he feels something. He feels the gentle brush of her lips against his and mentally he screams about the fact that he will never be able to return that kiss. He tries, and not for the first time, to move his arms so that he can pull her against him and hold her and, to his surprise, the hand which has rested upon his knee for so long shifts. It is slow, at first, and he tingles with the sensation that usually comes with sitting awkwardly for too long, but soon enough his hand is at her waist and he can feel the soft cotton of her skirt beneath his fingers. She pulls away in surprise, squeaks as his leg slips and her seat is upset even though he reaches to stabilise her.

He cannot help but laugh when he sees her amazed expression, the sound joyous and rich and full. He is free.

He is free.

He stands abruptly, holding the hobbit lass close as he spins in place, the happy laugh still pouring from his lips before he stops just long enough to kiss her again and assure himself that this is no waking dream, no frantic illusion.

"You're alive," she breathes as they spin. "You're real? Not just a dream?"

He stops, looks down in to her green eyes.

"I was always alive," he tells her, the sound of his voice strange in his ears after so many years of being only in his thoughts. The lass gasps, stares at him.

"I know that voice," she says. "I have heard it so many times. I thought I was losing my mind. But how is this possible?"

"A wizard," Frerin explains, "found me when I was dying on the battlefield and cursed me to stone. He told me I would only be free when I found the other half of my heart. After over a hundred years I had begun to despair. And then you, _you_ came into my world and you were _everything_ I could ever have dreamed of."

"I used to tell myself stories about you," Bilba admits, "I used to pretend that I could hear your voice in my mind as you sang to me and told me about your brother and sister and father... I suppose that was all fanciful imagining."

"I have a brother and sister," Frerin confirms, "though I know not whether they live or where they might be found."

"Bilba Baggins!" A familiar voice shouts in the distance and the lass in his arms stiffens.

"Take me with you," she begs, "when you go to find them, please take me with you. I don't want to marry, not the one they've picked for me. I learn quickly, I can learn how to live in the wild."

"It will not be easy," Frerin says, "we could be roaming for years and once we leave there will be nowhere you can stop and stay."

"I don't care, anything is better than this. Please take me," she leans up to press a desperate kiss to his lips. " _Please_."

He should refuse the request. He has nothing. He is penniless and alone in the world with no idea where his family might be found, but this hobbit lass, _Bilba_ , is the other half of his heart. Without her love he would not be free. He cannot refuse, though he should, and as he hears raised voices approaching he takes her hand in his and drags her in the opposite direction.

He has no idea where they will go or what they will do, but that can wait until he finds word of his family. The settlements in Ered Luin are not too far. Surely there would be word of the line of Thror there if nowhere else.

* * *

_The statue disappeared as mysteriously as it arrived, leaving no sign that it had ever existed at all. One fine spring morning the family of Bilba Baggins discovered the bench empty and cold, with only the girl's shawl carelessly discarded in the grass to show that she had ever been there. Neither statue, nor the unfortunate Miss Baggins, were ever seen again, although it is said by some that on clear spring nights her laughter can be heard under the party tree, joined by the deep bass sound of a dwarf._

**Author's Note:**

> This has been in the works for ages, after a throwaway comment to Jimiel while I was writing Wild Magic (and I think she might have just been starting Caught In A Fantasy). And since her birthday is soon (tomorrow) I figured I would finish it for her. Happy birthday!


End file.
